Children of the Dusk (35 page)

Johann grinned.

"
Must I repeat myself
?" Hempel screamed.

The circle of guards who had followed the young corporal to the scene raised their Mausers and stood at attention.

"Take me!" someone called out from the back of the group of Jews. "No, take me!" another volunteered, and then another, until a chorus of voices offered themselves as Solomon's proxy.

"Stop this!" Sol shouted. "I will not allow any of you to die for me."

"The choice is not yours, Rabbi!"

David Kupke, a young man in his mid twenties, stepped forward. Sol did not know him well, though people said he was once the finest young wheelwright ever to fire up a forge in Duderstadt, a strapping, happy youth given to swapping bierstube stories of hard labor and easy women. Two years in the camps had transformed him into a stooped husk who rarely spoke and spent every possible moment creating string-art masterpieces between his fingers.

He turned toward the other prisoners and--hands at chest height so the Nazis couldn't see--made a string-art piece which, though imaginary, had a clear purpose. A noose for Otto Hempel.

Angry chin held high, he turned to face the major.

"Do you serve Germany...or do you serve God!" Hempel demanded, a look of humor in his eyes.

"They are one and the same, Sturmbannführer!"

"You serve with every ounce of your filthy Jewish flesh?"

"Yes, Sturmbannführer!"

"Then prove your worth."

Hempel stuck his left foot forward. The prisoner dropped to his knees and kissed the toe of the major's boot.

"You seem to have been well schooled at Sachsenhausen," Hempel said. "Stand up. You serve a master well. From now on, you will serve the Kalanaro. Because your attitude has proved sufficient, you will not be eaten...while still alive."

The major made a sharp left-face as he leveled his pistol and fired point-blank into the young man's face. The body staggered back against the fence, and collapsed.

Solomon stared in horror at the blood. Goldman took half a step forward.

"You want something, Jew?" Hempel said to him. "Aren't you the one who blew the horn and turned my tank into a plow?"

Goldman stared the major down.

Hempel turned. "I'll be back at sundown. Anyone who looks like they're even thinking of a religious service will be fed to the dogs." He spun on his heel and was gone.

"Why, Lucius?" Sol asked. He thought of the child about to be born. Of Miriam and Misha who needed him, as did the others in the compound. "For God's sake, why did David do it?"

"For many reasons." Goldman looked toward the horizon. "They need you here, the others. You have always been there for us." He gazed at the dead man, then into Solomon's eyes. "Whether you wish it or not, I am going to sing
Kol Nidre
tonight."

Solomon began to object, but Goldman held up his hand. "Hear me out, Reb. I know how you feel about risking our lives for a tradition which God will surely forgive us for ignoring. I understand your logic, your reasoning. But what is in my heart is in my heart. Perhaps I have simply had enough of this struggle and this is my way to kill myself. A coward's way--to have it done for me and die a martyr. Whatever the reason, I shall sing
Kol Nidre
at sundown and mourn this young man's death. Should I survive until sundown tomorrow, I will blow the Shofar after
Yiskor
."
 

"At least let us poll the others," Sol insisted.

"You know very well that they will say it must be my choice," Goldman said.

"I suppose I do." Sol's voice was heavy with sadness. "I suppose I do."

"He will kill us all eventually, Otto Hempel," Goldman said.

Sol shook his head. "I do not think so. Even a madman would recognize that he requires laborers. Besides, we will not let him. This is not Sachsenhausen. There are three times as many of us as them, and we are growing stronger daily." And he needs us to complete his private agenda, Sol thought, but was too weary to say. "Perhaps there can even be
L'shanah habaa b'Yerushalayim
...a next year in Jerusalem," he said instead.

A feeling of exhaustion dragged at him and he put his head in his hands----

----
In a flash of brilliant, cobalt-blue light, he enters the crypt and moves toward Miriam, who holds a blanket-wrapped baby in her arms
. He reaches out for her but she pulls away, staring at his hands. He looks down at them, and they are covered with blood.

"Deborah," he whispers. "We'll call her 'Deborah.'" He wishes he could close his eyes around that thought forever----

The Jews gathered in clusters, talking of choices and the lack of them, and of next year in Jerusalem.

"Before we do either," Max said, "we must bury David and go back to work, or feel Pleshdimer's stick in our ribs."

"Pleshdimer is dead," Solomon said quietly.

In the ensuing silence, he told the others what he had seen, and what he had overheard about Hempel's grand scheme.

"What are we to do, Rabbi?" someone asked.

"We wait," Sol answered before he realized he had spoken.

He focussed on the faces before him. His decisions would come not from himself or from God, but from these men around him.

"They may make a show of strength by killing a few to frighten the many. Those without the brains or balls to be real men have to flex
something
," he said. There was a ripple of nervous, macabre chuckling. He waited until it had quieted before he went on. "The Nazis are madmen, but they are not inefficient. It is out of the question that they sailed the
Altmark
all the way here just to shoot us."

"Unless Hempel wants to end whatever was being attempted here, and have an excuse to go home," Goldman said.

Sol searched for a comeback that would combine logic and hope, but the logical answer was that Goldman was right--and hope wasn't logical.

"We must free ourselves and make a home here," Max said.

"A home
land
," someone argued.

"Jews! Back to work," the young voice of Johann called out, interrupting their discussions. "You think you're on holiday? You have a dock to finish."

Sol and Lucius headed for the wood-milling area. For the most part, it was not a rough detail, but it was noisy, and for Sol there were inherent dangers that caused him more pain than it might have the others. Standing a meter away and cradling a log end in his arms, he drew back as the two circular blades sent woodchips and sawdust flying. The spray beat against his face and invaded his eyes, bringing instant pain.

"Will you conduct the Service?" Goldman whispered, in the momentary silence between cuts.

Sol shook his head and rushed to meet what the saws produced. Shouldering several planks, he walked across the compound, through the gate, and down the steep, rutted trail that led to the beach.

"Will you conduct the Service?" Goldman asked again, coming up behind him. "If not, say so and I shall find another!"

Goldman moved ahead. The two men concentrated on their loads as the trail steepened and their speed increased. When they came out of the forest and into the light, the sea breeze washed against their hot skin.

"It's much too risky," Sol said. But by then the sorghum farmer had pulled far ahead. They did not speak of the matter again until they had returned to the compound for lunch and Sol saw the older man moving from group to group, conferring with the others. Two strides and he was behind Goldman.

"If everyone can seem to be going about their business as normally as possible, I will lead all of you in words of prayer this holy day," he whispered, "but you must pray with me in silence, so as not to attract attention. Even saying one word is courting disaster, so I cannot conduct a full
Kol Nidre
Service. In return for this concession, you must promise not to sing."

"I will do what I must," Goldman said.

Sol continued to drift from one small group to another. As he left each one, they in turn moved among other prisoners. The flicker of lifted eyes was enough to tell him which men were ready to receive whatever joy he could give them. How fine a congregation these men would have made, he thought, seated in the Grünewald Synagogue, wearing the traditional white of the Day of Atonement. How much finer they looked than had those businessmen in Berlin. Even dressed as they were, and enslaved, they were willing to risk their lives for one prayer. These men were indeed the children of God.

Sol walked among them, voice lower than a whisper. "As you know, Lucius Goldman insists upon singing
Kol Nidre
tonight. If Erich Weisser were still in command, we could safely hold a service. We could even, tomorrow, commemorate
Neilah
, and properly close the gates of Yom Kippur by blowing the Shofar after the final saying of
Yizkor
, the prayer for the dead. But he is not. With Otto Hempel in command, who among us does not believe that that one long blast would bring retribution upon our heads? I am sure God sees, and understands our need to keep the horn wrapped in its rag and hidden away this year. Doubtless he will also forgive our lack of prayer shawls,
yarmulkes
, and candles."

He turned away from observing the others and, standing alone, thought about the death of a man and the coming of a child.

C
ertainly, Herr Sturmbannführer, I'll follow you to the camp like a good boy, Erich thought, staring at the back of Hempel's head. In a pig's eye, he would. A few minutes later he had sidestepped into the foliage and was watching Hempel and Solomon crest the rise and disappear into the compound area. The only possible reason for re-entering the compound would have been to find a bottle of schnapps. What had begun as general discomfort in his hip now ran like liquid fire up his back and down both legs. Even the last of what was in his flask might have served to dull the pain a little.

Worse than the pain, though, was the debasement. To think, he told himself, that he had actually begun to trail the pair, like a dog skulking after a master, or some pathetic camp follower trying to work her way toward the center of power--a whore sniffing for money.

Cat got your tongue
? the hooker had mocked him that Christmas he had stood beneath the street lamp and imagined Solomon and Miriam in the flat across the street, sleeping in one another's arms.
I don't mind pain if the money's right
....

Taurus had shown her pain.

Taurus.

He glanced back at the Storch. All his life he had sacrificed, and for what! All the years of athletic training and toil, only to have his chance for the Olympics snatched away by a scant two centimeters. Climbing the military ladder despite damaged fingers that should have kept him out of the Service in the first place, only to find the platform at the top crowded with the likes of Heinrich Himmler and that clubfooted whoremonger, Josef Goebbels. Here, on an island in the backwater of nowhere, struggling to save the original intent of the mission and salvage what pride he had left, only to be usurped by one for whom service consisted of boys and young soldiers bending over and parting their buttocks.

He felt useless, used up. He had nothing more to give. Solomon could have Miriam; she had never been his anyway. And the baby, who knew whose child that was. Probably not even Miriam knew, he thought acidly. He turned and trundled back down toward the beach, reveling in the pain, wondering if Taurus would greet him, or if it would be like coming home to an empty house.

When the sea and the Storch were in full view, the water like crinkled aluminum in the breeze, he looked at the beautiful dog tethered beneath the wing. In a moment of icy clarity, he knew that there was one more sacrifice he had to make, one more trial he must endure. He supposed he had known it since that first day, when the Zana-Malata reduced the guard dogs to whimpering cowards beneath the hut; certainly he had known it, but refused to admit it, from the moment the pain in his hips was no longer sympathetic, but real.

According to the syphilitic, the transference of the dysplasia from Taurus to Erich was only temporary in that, if he died, it would return to the dog. And unless he regained his command, he was as good as dead. Killing Hempel wasn't enough--and could mean being hauled to Berlin in chains. Rather, he needed the men's acknowledgement, if not acclamation, of his leadership. Hempel might not have him physically leashed, like Taurus and Misha, but he was tethered just the same. When whatever purpose the major had for him was over, he would be discarded as surely and suddenly as Pleshdimer had been.

He touched the knife sheathed at his side and began a jerky hobble-run despite the pain. There was only one way he would have the emotional strength to manage this ultimate sacrifice, he thought. Somehow, he would have to force himself into a mental state that divorced him from his emotional attachment to Taurus.

The answer came to him more easily than he had anticipated: he would bring on an epileptic seizure. Berlin's dance marathons had intrigued him, but he'd had to stay out of ballrooms because of the lights that bounced off the mirrored globes revolving overhead; during his countless hours at the Marmorhaus, Strongheart and Rin Tin Tin flickering on the screen had placed him teetering on the abyss of an epileptic episode.